Cable television providers are able to provide their subscribers with community interest information either through a dedicated channel which constantly displays such information, or by overlaying such information over other channels which are also showing regular programming. Such community interest information might include local weather, news and advertising, for example.
There is an increasing use of satellite television services by residential customers. However, the widespread use of such satellite services has been hampered by the need for subscribers to be able to receive community interest information. There is currently no known art which enables the receipt of community interest information by television users who only have a satellite connection. Satellite based service providers are not local in nature, instead providing service to very large geographical areas. Broadcasting community interest messages over satellite channels would require that different message streams be provided for a large number of different communities and this is impractical due to the limited amount of satellite transmission bandwidth available.
Subscribers to existing satellite services who are located in large metropolitan centres may in some cases receive community interest information which is broadcast nationwide via satellite for example on "superstations" originating in these large centres. For the remainder of the population, existing satellite services do not and cannot provide such community interest information.
It is noted that the use of the PSTN (public switched telephone network) by satellite service providers in existing systems is limited to the transmission of subscriber accounting information and viewing patterns from subscriber locations to the satellite service provider.